Divine Intervention (2002)

Comedy, 1h 32m

In Nazareth, under a guise of banal normalcy, the town embraces folly. Under pressure from his failing business, a man takes matters into his own hands and tries to break a chain reaction of petty feuds. He breaks down himself. The man is E.S.' father. A love story takes place between a Palestinian man living in Jerusalem and a Palestinian woman from Ramallah. The man - E.S. - shifts between his ailing father and his love life, trying to keep both alive. Because of the political situation, the woman's freedom of movement ends at the Israeli army checkpoint between the two cities. Barred from crossing, the lovers' intimate encounters take place on a deserted lot right beside the checkpoint. The lovers are unable to exempt reality from occupation. They are unable to preserve their intimacy in the face of a siege. A complicity of solemn desire begins to generate violent repercussions and against the odds, their angry hearts counter-attack with spasms of spectacular fantasy.

Director: Elia Suleiman

Cinematographer: Marc-André Batigne

Editor: Véronique Lange

Starring:

Elia Suleiman

Manal Khader

George Ibrahim

Salwa Nakkara

To My Father (2008)

Documentary, 53m

“Those were days when people prettier, when eyes were filled with colour, even in black and white. What has changed - the camera, or the eye?" asks Abdel Salam Shehadah's poetic homage to the studio photographers of the 1950's - 70's. Set partly in a refugee camp in Rafah, the film looks back at fifty years of Palestinian and Arab history, told through the photographs, reportage and the voices of these photographers today.

Director: Abdel Salam Shehada

Producer: Qassim Ali

Cinematographer: Abdel Salam Shehada

Editor: Abdelrahman Hussien

Trip Along Exodus (2015)

Documentary, 2h

Trip Along Exodus is a film/poem that recreates the last 70 years of Palestinian and Arab politics seen through the prism of the life of the filmmaker’s father, Dr. Elias Shoufani, a leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, an academic and leftist intellectual who was one of the leaders of the opposition to Arafat within Fatah for 20 years. The film language uses archive, poetry, family photos/8mm films, glitter, cartoons, animation, macro-photography, interviews, and other multimedia formats in a video-art amalgam—a personal and political memoir.

Director: Hind Shoufani

Editor: Ayman Nahle

Cinematography: Adam Shapiro, Lafi, Nick Zajicek, Hind Shoufani, Jato Smith, Raja2i Khatib, Hussam Hariri, Atilio Menendez Ferrer.

Music: Jean Madani, Bassel Abbas, Munma.

Color: Belal Hibri

Graphics: Rayan Ghammachi

Kings and Extras (2004)

Documentary, 1h 2m

The films of the PLO Media Unit were supposed to show a self-determined image of Palestinian reality – and they went missing during the Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982. In a “road-movie” from Palestine to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, the director Azza El-Hassan follows the contradicting and confusing clues as to the whereabouts of the lost archive. The increasingly absurd search finally leads her to a martyr’s graveyard, where the films are said to be buried and where, for obvious reasons, no one is willing to dig. While Azza’s search for lost images leads her down various dead ends, she is confronted with new clues and starts to construct her own story. The film reflects the situation in the Middle East – a failed revolution, the problematic relationship with the Arab neighbours, the question of a Palestinian identity today. Azza El-Hassan shows myths, life stories and life lies, the personal effects of defeat and loss. She even brings some humour to the tragedy of the situation – to which she simultaneously feels a sense of belonging and opposition.

Writer & Director: Azza El-Hassan

Off Frame AKA Revolution Until Victory (2016)

Documentary, 1h 5m

Off Frame AKA Revolution Until Victory is a meditation on the Palestinian people's struggle to produce an image and self-representation on their own terms in the 1960s and 1970s, with the establishment of the Palestine Film Unit as part of the PLO. Unearthing films stored in archives across the world after an unprecedented research and access, the film begins with popular representations of modern Palestine and traces the works of militant filmmakers in reclaiming image and narrative through revolutionary and militant cinema. In resurrecting a forgotten memory of struggle, Off Frame reanimates what is within the frame, but also weaves a critical reflection by looking for what is outside it, or what is off frame.

Director: Mohanad Yaqubi

Writers: Reem Shilleh & Mohanad Yaqubi

Editors: Ramzi Hazboun & David Osit

“Off Frame is a work that is unavoidably steeped in questions of the past but doubly functions as a reflection on our position as spectators “looking back” at history. ”

— Ivan Čerečina, 4:3

dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997)

Documentary, 1h 8m

Buckle up for dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, the acclaimed hijacking documentary that eerily foreshadowed 9-11. We meet the romantic skyjackers who fought their revolutions and won airtime on the passenger planes of the 1960’s. By the 1990s, such characters apparently are no more, replaced on our TV screens by stories of state-sponsored suitcase bombs.

Director Johan Grimonprez investigates the politics behind this change, at the same time unwrapping our own complicity in the urge for ultimate disaster. Playing on Don DeLillo’s riff in the novel MAO II: ‘what terrorists gain, novelists lose’ and ‘home is a failed idea’, he blends archive hijackings with surreal and banal themes including fast food, pet statistics, disco and his quirky home movies. David Shea wrote the superb soundtrack to this roller coaster through history, best described in the words of one hijacked Pepsi executive as: “running the gamut of many emotions: from surprise to shock, to fear, to joy, to laughter and then again, fear.”

Writer & Director: Johan Grimonprez

Original Music & Sample Collage: David Shea

Red Army/PFLP: Declaration of World War (1971)

Documentary, 1h 9m

In 1971, Koji Wakamatsu and Masao Adachi, both having ties to the Japanese Red Army, stopped in Palestine on their way home from the Cannes Film festival. There they caught up with JRA ex-pats Fusako Shigenobu and Mieko Toyama in training camps to create a newsreel-style agit-prop film based off of the "landscape theory" (fûkeiron) that Adachi and Wakamatsu had developed. The theory, most evident at work in A.K.A. Serial Killer (1969), aimed to move the emphasis of film from situations to landscapes as expression of political and economical power relations.

In 1974 Adachi left Japan and committed himself to the Palestinian Revolution and linked up with the Japan Red Army. His activities thereafter were not revealed until he was arrested and imprisoned in 1997 in Lebanon. In 2001 Adachi was extradited to Japan, and after two years of imprisonment, he was released and subsequently published Cinema/Revolution [Eiga/Kakumei], an auto-biographical account of his life.

Directors: Masao Adachi & Koji Wakamatsu

Featuring:

Rokihiro Toga

Aoi Nakajima

Fusako Shigenobu

Susumu Iwabuchi

Masao Matsuda

Masao Adachi

Leila Khaled

Ghassan Kanafani

Fertile Memory (1981)

Documentary, 1h 39m

Fertile Memory is the feature debut of pioneering director Michel Khleifi. Lyrically blending both documentary and narrative elements, Khleifi skillfully and lovingly crafts a portrait of two Palestinian women whose individual struggles both define and transcend the politics that have torn apart their homes and their lives.

“Both Sahar and Romia are trapped by the society in which they live, but they experience this stuckness differently. Sahar possesses the words, the other doesn’t. Romia exists, but without defining herself as an individual. Both are frustrated by history, the intellectual one perhaps doubly so for her awareness of this frustration, of the loneliness imposed on her by her situation as a divorcée.

Romia accepts her solitude after becoming a widow without bitterness, because she has decided that there is no other way. One character’s words corner those of the other, and I insisted on the film to work in that way, so that the viewer reacts to it, takes active part in the film, becomes an accomplice.”

— Michel Khleifi

Director: Michel Khleifi

Cinematographers: Marc-André Batigne & Yves van der Meer

Sound: Ricardo Castro

Editor: Moufida Tlatli

Featuring: Farah Hatoum & Sahar Khalifeh

Jaffa: Mother of the Stranger (2019)

Documentary, 1h 12m

Constructed through oral histories, Jaffa tells the story of the city from the perspective of those who lived there before their expulsion in 1948. They share their narratives and memories in order to describe life in Jaffa before the Nakba: details like the layout of neighbourhoods and roads, and the markets and cultural centres, as well as the citrus industry. Together, their accounts paint a picture of a vibrant city, stolen by colonization. Their testimony concludes with a heart wrenching account of the inhabitants’ decision to flee as violence engulfed their home.

Director: Raed Duzdar

Frontiers of Dreams and Fears (2001)

Documentary, 1h

Mona and Manar are two Palestinian girls growing up in refugee camps in Beirut and Bethlehem. Despite the overwhelming barriers that separate them, the girls form a close friendship through letters and a dramatic meeting at the Lebanese border. Shot during the liberation of southern Lebanon from Israeli occupation and at the beginning of the Palestinian intifada, frontiers of dreams and fears articulates the feelings, hopes, and growing activism of a generation of young Palestinians living in exile.

Director: Mai Masri

Producers: Mai Masri, Jean Khalil Chamoun

Music: Anouar Brahem

Cinematography: Jimmy Michel, Hussein Nassar

Featuring: Manar Faraj, Mona Zaaroura

Mayor (2020)

Documentary, 1h 29m

MAYOR follows Musa Hadid, the Christian mayor of Ramallah, during his second term in office. His immediate goals: repave the sidewalks, attract more tourism, and plan the city’s Christmas celebrations. His ultimate mission: to end the occupation of Palestine.

Rich with detailed observation and humor, MAYOR offers a portrait of dignity amidst the madness and absurdity of endless occupation while posing a question: how do you run a city when you don’t have a country?

Director: David Osit

Editors: David Osit, Eric Daniel Metzgar

Featuring: Musa Hadid, Ameer Assadi, Walaa Eltiti, Yazeed Faruja

Score: Geinoh Yamashirogumi, Toru Takemitsu, Sam Thompson, David Osit

Ouroboros (2017)

---

In Memory of Yaser Murtaja

---

Experimental, 1h 17m

An homage to the Gaza Strip based on the eternal return. A journey following one man through five different landscapes marks the end as the beginning, forgetting as the way forward, and the failure of civilization.

Writer & Director: Basma Alsharif

Cinematographer: Ben Russel

Drone & Steadycam (Gaza): Yaser Murtaja

Sound: Federico Chiari

Original Music: Yann Gourdon, Bunny People

Voiceover: Sky Hopinka

Starring: Diego Marcon, Claire De Pimodan, Lauren Strom Berg, Joseph Valdez, Yann Gourdon

“Ouroboros is an essay on displacement, the psychological mindscape of physical removal from one’s home...It speaks a cinematic language unlike any other.”

— Daniel Schindel, The Film Stage

The Dupes (1972)

Drama, 1h 46m

Set in the 1950s, The Dupes traces the destinies of three different men brought together by their dispossession, their despair and their hope for a better future. The protagonists are Palestinian refugees who are trying to make their way across the border from Iraq into Kuwait, the 'Promised Land,' concealed in the steel tank of a truck. Representing different dimensions of the Palestinian experience, each one believes he can make a new life for himself, but as the film’s title suggests, their flight is no solution. One of the first Arab films to address the Palestinian question, 'The Dupes' is based on the 1962 novella 'Men in the Sun' by assassinated Palestinian writer, artist and resistance leader, Ghassan Kanafani. Set in Palestine and Iraq, and filmed in Syria by Tewfik Saleh, an Egyptian director, the film was banned in several Arab countries due to its implied criticisms of Arab governments.

Director: Tewfik Saleh

Writers: Ghassan Kanafani (novel “Men in the Sun”), Tewfik Saleh

Cinematographer: Bahgat Heidar

Editors: Farin Dib, Saheb Haddad

Music: Solhi El-Wadi

Sound Department: Zoheir Fahmy

Starring: Mohamed Kheir-Halouani, Abdul Rahman Al Rashi, Bassam Lofti Abou-Ghazala, Thanaa Debsi

Jerusalem Bride (2010)

75 minutes, Drama

Through the daily life of Jerusalemite social worker Riham, we discover the difficult situation and suffering experienced by four families because of the political, economic and social circumstances in the Old City. Riham faces her own Personal difficulties in her wish to marry Omar. His family opposes the marriage fearing for their own reputation, do to the habits of her brother.

Director: Sahera Darbis

Haifa (1996)

Drama, 1h 15m

Haifa, nicknamed after the city he longs for, comes and goes in a Palestinian refugee camp. Although he is seen as the town fool, there are many things that only he knows. He is closely related to the family of Abu Said, a former policeman who is has high hopes for the political developments promised by the peace process. Oum Said, his wife, hangs her hope instead on the imminent release of their eldest son, Said, from jail. Their youngest son, Siad, is cynical and rebellious. Sabah, their twelve year old daughter sees the future through the eyes of a romantic, searching for what it might hold in store for her.

Writer & Director: Rashid Masharawi

Cinematographer: Edwin Verstegen

Editor: Hadara Oren

Music: Said Morad-Sabrin

Set Decorator: Jamal Afghani

Starring:

Mohammad Bakri

Hiam Abbass

Areen Omari

Ahmed Abu Saloum

Nawal Zaqout

Khalid Awad

Ibrahim: A Fate to Define (2019)

Documentary, 1h 15m

In this provocative and personal documentary, director Lina Al Abed searches for traces of her disappeared father: a seemingly ordinary Palestinian family man who was actually a secret member of a militant splinter faction and vanished when she was just a child. Her journey to discover what happened to her father becomes a quest to define her identity, and her relationship to Ibrahim’s fate.

Director: Lina Al Abed

Editor: Rami El Nihawi

Habibi (2011)

Drama, 1h 8m

Habibi, a story of forbidden love, is a fiction feature set in Gaza. Two students in the West Bank are forced to return home to Gaza, where their love defies tradition. To reach his lover, Qays grafittis poetry across town. Habibi is a modern re-telling of the famous ancient Sufi parable Majnun Layla. The full Arabic title is ‘Habibi Rasak Kharban,’ which translates as “Darling, something’s wrong with your head.”

Writer & Director: Susan Youssef
Cinematography: PJ Raval
Editor: Susan Youssef & Man Kit Lam
Music: Menno Cruijsen
Starring: Maisa Abd Elhadi & Kais Nashif

The Brazilian Palestine (2017)

Documentary, 1h 19m

Marked by ethnic and cultural diversity, Rio Grande do Sul now houses thousands of Palestinian immigrants and their descendants. The communities born of the Nakba seek, in the diaspora, full integration and a new citizenship in Brazil. Today, they try to survive, grow and gain recognition for their economic, social and cultural contribution. With scenes filmed in southern Brazil and the Middle East, The Brazilian Palestine reveals the roots, the degree of integration, and the sense of belonging felt by six families enduring prejudice, persecution and war. Theirs are stories of the living, that reveal lost places and stories left behind.

Director: Omar L. de Barros Filho

Presented in collaboration with Cine Fertile Association- The International Latin Arab Film Festival

¡Yallah! ¡Yallah! (2017)

Documentary, 1h 15m

The film focuses on the story of seven characters, which are connected to the world of football in one way or another. Through their daily lives, we get to know their bond with the sport, their activities and the problems they have to face due to the occupation by Israel. Even though they are constantly affected by Israel's subjugation of Palestine, they manage to survive and endure all sorts of issues in order to enjoy one of their biggest passions: football.

Director: Fernando Romanazzo & Cristian Pirovano

Production: Aqueronte Producciones & Palestine Football Association

Palestine: Stolen Images (2018)

Documentary, 1h 50m

Tracing the last 18 years of conflict between Israel and Palestine, this film-essay reflects on the shared history of national liberation movements in Latin America and the Middle East. Directed by Argentinian documentarian Rodrigo Vazquez, the film combines exclusive interviews with historical figures, direct-cinema from the battle-field and never-before-seen archival footage found in 2011, gathering dust on a shelf, in the Cuban Film Institute.

Director: Rodrigo Vazquez